Shopee India: Fixing the COD Refund Crisis Without Waiting for Product
Diagnosed a refund backlog as a data problem, built a workaround in days, and cut the pending refund queue significantly while the product fix was in progress.
Peeyush Jain
Strategy & Planning (President's Office) at Tata Digital
From their time as
Lead - Business Transformation (Core Team)
Shopee • 2021 - 2022
Overview
Peeyush was pulled into a situation where a large number of users were reporting that their refunds had not arrived. Internally, the returns team was taking the blame, with the assumption that the process was broken.
The Story
Peeyush was pulled into a situation where a large number of users were reporting that their refunds had not arrived. Internally, the returns team was taking the blame, with the assumption that the process was broken.
He investigated and found the real issue: the platform had no banking details on file for cash-on-delivery customers. The returns were eligible for refunds, but there was no way to issue them. The problem was not in the returns process. It was a product gap.
Building the Workaround
The product fix, building a journey that collected banking details at the point of a COD return request, would take time to scope, build, and ship. Peeyush did not wait for it. He designed a parallel solution: a mass IVR calling campaign to every customer with a stuck refund, directing them to a new section in their profile where they could enter their bank details or UPI ID.
He then built a backend cron job that ran every midnight, picked up newly submitted banking details, matched them to pending refunds, and issued the payments automatically. The system required no manual intervention once it was running.
Outcome
The pending refund queue dropped by approximately 50% in a single day after the IVR campaign went live. The product team continued building the permanent fix, and the workaround held until it was in place.